In Silico Modeling of the RAMPHO Buffer: Dissociating Informational and Energetic Masking via Phonetic Entropy in Deep Neural Networks

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1. Verfasser: Bleeck, Stefan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Bleeck, Stefan
author_facet Bleeck, Stefan
contents The fundamental challenge of listening in multi-talker environments is a cognitive bottleneck, defined by the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model as a failure within the RAMPHO episodic buffer. Current deep neural networks for speech enhancement optimize purely for physical acoustics, failing to account for the cognitive penalty of informational masking. Here, we present an in silico simulation of the RAMPHO buffer using the frame-by-frame phonetic entropy of a self-supervised acoustic model (wav2vec 2.0). By contrasting a semantically intact distractor with a phase-decorrelated distractor (the Concentration Shield) across a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) sweep, we successfully dissociate the cognitive penalty of informational distraction from the physical penalty of energetic decay. The simulation reveals a cognitive-acoustic Pareto optimization problem: destroying a distractor's semantic payload provides a release from informational masking at high SNRs, but fundamentally degrades temporal glimpsing cues at low SNRs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_22465
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle In Silico Modeling of the RAMPHO Buffer: Dissociating Informational and Energetic Masking via Phonetic Entropy in Deep Neural Networks
Bleeck, Stefan
Computation and Language
The fundamental challenge of listening in multi-talker environments is a cognitive bottleneck, defined by the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model as a failure within the RAMPHO episodic buffer. Current deep neural networks for speech enhancement optimize purely for physical acoustics, failing to account for the cognitive penalty of informational masking. Here, we present an in silico simulation of the RAMPHO buffer using the frame-by-frame phonetic entropy of a self-supervised acoustic model (wav2vec 2.0). By contrasting a semantically intact distractor with a phase-decorrelated distractor (the Concentration Shield) across a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) sweep, we successfully dissociate the cognitive penalty of informational distraction from the physical penalty of energetic decay. The simulation reveals a cognitive-acoustic Pareto optimization problem: destroying a distractor's semantic payload provides a release from informational masking at high SNRs, but fundamentally degrades temporal glimpsing cues at low SNRs.
title In Silico Modeling of the RAMPHO Buffer: Dissociating Informational and Energetic Masking via Phonetic Entropy in Deep Neural Networks
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.22465